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Parliament has resumed and Canberra is trying to work out which members of the National Party will defect to One Nation. If you are a sitting Nationals MP and you’re planning to eat lunch from Pauline Hanson’s sandwich press, what should you do? We’re here to help.
Immigration, net zero and guns – the current fight between the Nationals and One Nation is the finest example of the narcissism of small differences since Trotsky and Stalin. However, due to preferential voting, none of them will come near the government benches for years. In the words of Henry Kissinger, the politics of this are so vicious because the stakes are so low.
For some people (socialists!), choosing One Nation over the Nationals is like opting for cholera over typhoid. Certainly, notwithstanding recent opinion polls, fewer and fewer voters have actually turned their minds to this dilemma over the past decade, preferring to vote for that nice Ascham school captain with the curly hair.
However, if you are a National Party member pulling down a $233,660 salary and need to stay in parliament to top up your super – and you want to get up close to Gina Rinehart’s billions – this is important. You may feel that the uranium is greener on the other side of the fence.
As a public service, we’ve compiled a handy guide to whether to jump ute. Say yes to any three of these questions and you’ll be on Gina’s Gulfstream – for life.
- Do you hate the government, even though you’re on its payroll and have long been paid from the public purse? Have you been on television saying that you don’t trust the government, even though you represent a party which basically exists to nationalise failing industries and pork-barrel rural and regional electorates?
- Do you constantly reference the problems of “everyday Australians” and the price of petrol even though you have a portfolio of investment properties?
- Do you go around telling everyone that you have Chinese and Indian friends – and that immigrants are to blame for runaway house prices, rising interest rates, expensive groceries and bad weather?
- Do you write newspaper columns and go on Sky News at every opportunity to complain that the media is shutting you out of the national discourse?
- Are you creepily obsessed with policing women’s reproductive health even though you lack ovaries?
- Despite being educated at a GPS school, are you unable to grasp any basic scientific concepts? Did you attend Riverview the year they failed to teach the difference between climate and weather, or were you at rugby?
- Did you appear in the media to complain about the loss of family values just before you left your family for your electoral assistant?
- Have you actually read One Nation’s policies, which appear to have been written by James Ashby, an intern and the free version of ChatGPT? (It uses American spelling, suggesting that they cut and paste from US websites.)
Here’s an example from the party’s website, calling for an end to “net zero” because “it is a vehicle for creating a socialist Australia in which citizens are forced under comprehensive government control. Rising electricity prices under net zero policies contribute to energy poverty and enable increased centralised government control over the economy. The essence of individual freedom requires the constant monitoring and curtailment of the power and growth of the state, or as Thomas Jefferson said, ‘eternal vigilance’.”
Elsewhere on the website, One Nation says it intends to withdraw from organisations such as the United Nations, the World Health Organisation and the Paris Agreement. And under the “Climate” tab: “The longest-running weather collection station in Australia, known as the Nobby’s Weather Station at Newcastle, has shown no pattern of warming since temperature records were collected in 1862. The hottest mean average temperatures at Nobby’s were before 1900 and the highest maximums before 1890.”
Nobby’s Weather Station – the last bulwark against socialism!
Margot Saville is the Herald’s deputy opinion editor.
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